Provide immigrant children open space for involvement with both cultural groups and support cognitive flexibility through school programs¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 3 claims (3 for) · 1 study (1 associational), q3 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 3 claims rest on one study

Description¶

Based on the finding that balanced bicultural identification relates to cognitive flexibility, the authors recommend that Turkish immigrant children be given room to engage with both cultural communities, and that schools leverage EF training. They write that "Turkish immigrant children seem to need an open space in which they can get involved with people and values from both cultural groups to ultimately succeed in the educational domain," and that school programs improving EF and specifically cognitive flexibility may have positive side-effects for integration.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Educational settings that permit engagement with people and values from both the heritage and host cultural groups

Constraints¶

• The underlying evidence is correlational, so the authors frame the link between the two concepts, not a tested causal effect of such programs, as most relevant for intervention

Target Learners¶

• Turkish immigrant-origin children in German schools
• immigrant-origin students

Target Learning Goals¶

• cognitive flexibility
• educational success
• integration

Affordances¶

• Acculturation Complexity Model

Claims¶

• Turkish and German identity interactively predicted accuracy on mixed Dot Task trials requiring cognitive flexibility among immigrant-origin children [+W]
• The link between Turkish identity and mixed-trial accuracy was negative when German identity was low and marginally positive when German identity was high [+W]
• The identity interaction on mixed-trial accuracy held marginally when controlling for language abilities, which themselves did not predict performance [+W]

Related Strategies¶

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Spiegler O and Leyendecker B (2017) Balanced Cultural Identities Promote Cognitive Flexibility among Immigrant Children. Front. Psychol. 8:1579. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01579